Tana Toraja: where death meets life

In Tana Toraja they say you live to die. A region in the southern part of Sulawesi, Tana Toraja preserves elaborate funeral traditions and burial customs against the backdrop of rugged rock formations, rice paddies, and bow-roofed traditional houses. We traveled to Tana Toraja last weekend to see funerals and graves.

The Torajanese are an ethnic group in south Sulawesi. The name Toraja comes from the Bugis word toriaja meaning "uplands" and connotes "hillbillies" essentially. The Torajanese originally had animistic beliefs, but many of the people are Christian now since Dutch colonization. Some are also Muslims.

Funerals do not take place on Sundays so we spent Sunday touring the burial sites of Tana Toraja. To guard against the threat of thieves stealing bodies, the Torajanese place the bodies of loved ones high in caves, or at great heights in rock formations. In addition, they create tau tau, a wooden figurine that represents the person who is inside the grave. Some of the more recent tau tau look quite realistic. At one site, we were told that people at the highest points were in the highest class. They construct bamboo platforms and ladders like what you see in the photo below in order to transport the body to that height. We also visited a place where they previously placed babies who had died. The babies were placed in holes in the trees and then the holes were covered it until the tree mended itself. There’s rich symbolism in that the tree continues to grow, and with it, so does the child. This strikes me as a beautiful way to let go of a child.

Tau tau
Bamboo ladder, enabling placement at greater heights

Baby graves

On our second day, we caught wind of a funeral in Rembon, an hour or so away from our base in Rantepao. We dressed in black out of respect. We were told that we should bring something like a large package of cigarettes, or, had we been a larger group, a pig. We went with the cigarettes. We knew to expect an elaborate day of events. We arrived at the village in Rembon and walked to the central area where temporary houses and structures had been built for the funeral. The deceased woman had passed away two years prior, and she was over 100 when she died. Until the funeral, they keep the deceased in a coffin sort of encasement in the back of their homes. They spend the time saving for the funeral and making the necessary preparations.

We were ushered into a pavilion where we ate traditional cakes and drank Torajanese coffee. After awhile we walked around to see the preparations. We saw where they were digging into a rock, preparing a place for her body. We saw men preparing the Torajanese food known as pa’piong, which consists of pork, coconut, and vegetables, placed inside of bamboo and cooked over a fire. We also saw pig intestines, stomach, and a whole pig roasting on a fire--images which I have withheld from this post (available upon request).

Men making pa'piong by stuffing bamboo with the pork mixture. We never figured out why some were wearing helmets.

By this time, the service was underway. We were invited to watch it. It was a Christian service and some of the hymns were familiar to my friend Melanie, who grew up in a Dutch reformed church. After the service we ate the traditional food and chatted with some people there. We also admired the Torajanese attire of the girls below. Before long the procession would begin, when they transport the body to the central ceremony area. She was placed in a small replica of the houses there, which are known as tongkonan. The men formed a circle around her and started yelping and jumping up and down. A long strip of red fabric extended in front. In the middle of this procession, a buffalo escaped the grip of his owner and the crowd scattered. We moved along with the procession to the central area where they transported the body again to another traditional house. They also had her tau tau ready and waiting in a nearby pavilion.

They sacrifice one water buffalo on the first day (on subsequent days they kill many). Fortunately, I did not see it when it was killed, but I did see the aftermath of skinning. Then, the water buffalo fights began. We loved the humor in this—they paint names on the buffalo and place bets (illegally) on who will win. These fights are not exciting when the buffalo are locked head to head, but they become quite thrilling when the buffalo start to run into the crowd or a up a hill. By the time we had watched a few buffalo fights, we were ready to retire for the day.

The next day we saw portions of other funerals. In between our stops we could not get enough of the landscape from our spots on the back of motorbikes. I am convinced the best way to see a country is on the back of a motorbike. Mundane life floats in images of laundry spread across shrubery to dry, children chasing one another and the chickens, men smoking in the shade, a boy leading a buffalo to its water source. The tongkonan are clustered in villages and decorate the landscape. These homes and the rice barns are covered in decorative wood carvings. The more buffalo horns on the front of the house, the higher the status of the family who lives there. We visited a village where we met a woman who invited us into her home. As it turns out, her father had passed away two years prior, so we saw where he was kept in her home.

The bundle behind her is her dad

Later we saw the remnants of 18 buffalo that had been killed. Men were preparing the skins to be sold. The guests were sent home with buffalo meat. It was gory, but it was not unbearable. We saw some boys who toted the hooves around on strings. The buffalo cost anywhere from $400-$9,000. We went to the buffalo market on another day and posed with an albino water buffalo (these are the most expensive).

Tana Toraja is a place unlike any other place I have visited. While its cultural richness has no doubt evolved and perhaps diminished as a result of boom in tourism twenty years ago, it remains other-worldly in many respects.